MASSAGE, IMMUNITY AND COMMUNITY

Love means you breathe in two countries. – Naomi Nye

We are living in very challenging time.  Not to be a spoil sport, but we know that it is reasonable, given the unresolved psychological and ecological issues of humankind, to wonder what the world will be like 50-100 years from now.  In addition to possible future global dangers, massage therapists and educators are themselves at a great crossroads defining, as we become more accepted and accessible, whether we are really to become part of the medical-industrial establishment or to retain our maverick, holistic feet-in-both-camps status. 

Frankly, I’m staunchly in the latter camp, believing in the precious natural and spiritual healing legacy of Andrew Taylor Still, Martin Buber, Hugh Milne, Ida Rolf and other great teacher/therapists throughout history. Their perspective is highlighted by their implicit commitment to the opposite of the stretch reflex (the tendency for person to tense up when approached too hard or moved too fast).  They each taught, in their way, how to create the opposite effect – the bodymind opening up to learning and peacefulness by being treated in a healing manner. 

Years ago there was a famous issue of National Geographic magazine containing a lengthy article on the immune system.  It aroused in me some sneaking suspicions.  It depicted the immune system as an intense and formidable military apparatus with T-cells as tanks and B-cells as anti-personnel weapons, the good solider lymphocytes, the valiant white blood cells all amassed in do-or-die battle against the dreaded pathogens, the NON-SELF substances, the foreign invaders threatening our very boundaries!  I thought – just wait a minute!   This is b.s.  Is health really to be defined as an organism’s success at defending itself against foreign invaders?

At that time I postulated in jest and in hope a much more interesting system, one based on nourishment and love, not on division, conquest or repulsion.  This is a complementary system with its own specialized cells, molecular dynamism and organs that splendidly welcomes “outsiders”.  I imagined the foreign visitors being offered refreshment.  “Some DNA or maybe you would like a phosphate?  Or a massage in the interstitial baths or would you like to experience the sublimity of being rocked in the cerebrospinal fluid?”

These thoughts acted as seeds for years of questioning and reflection.  Where and how might be this opposite of the immune system? 

A few years later, a chiropractor claimed to me that chiropractors were more effective than massage therapists because with their adjustments they worked faster than the stretch reflex could kick in.  Somewhat defensively I countered that our work was more powerful because we worked slower than the stretch reflex could kick in.

Years later this conversation lit up a big light bulb for me.  I was searching for an explanation as to the nature and efficacy of the main touch tool of Zero Balancing and my method of Deep Massage, called the “fulcrum”.  This is similar to what I and others teach as “melting” or myofascial release in which the therapist presses into the body until they feel the beginning of resistance, then waits attentively for a further opening, then adds, as feels appropriate, two or more additional gentle vectors of force.  Explained anatomically, I thought, one might say the therapist enters until just the beginning of the stretch reflex, waits for it to fatigue, then softens and lengthens the connective tissue in some relevant directions.

Then I began to see the stretch reflex as a response to entry into the body, not just a mechanism designed to prevent the over-stretching of joints.  A whole new world opened up.  Seen from this perspective, the stretch reflex is a way for the body to repel from its surface things that bump against it too hard or too fast.  It serves, in other words, to repel non-self substances.  But isn’t that an immune function?  Exactly. The stretch reflex is an immune mechanism repelling non-self input but on such a grand scale that we may want to consider it as part of what I call the “macro-immune system”.

This macro-immune function is useful.  However, as important as the need for immunity is, the there is an equal or greater need for “community”.  Interestingly, “community” etymologically means “to change, grow or move together”; whereas “immunity” derives from  “exempt from public service”. 

We need each other.  And on the level of touch we need a quality of touch that encourages this commune response, not just the immune response.  Like any useful learning, we need to let therapeutic and positive touch with therapists, friends and loved ones communicate with us, so that we are reminded and know more deeply we are not alone, we each are part of the community of humankind and nature.  It is this nourishment - experienced from healthy connections with ourselves, our friends, relatives, and environment - upon which our health and sanity depend.

The high qualities of touch we cultivate in Deep Massage and Zero Balancing are designed to allow the opposite of the macro-immune response.  When we touch with respect for the boundaries of the person’s bodymind, the client, rather repelling the touch, actually lets themselves “take in” important information about themselves and the world we live in.

Often I note with myself, my students, and clients that most humans have an interesting and controversial tendency.  We tend to find fault with ourselves over and over again.  However, I think none of us would be involved in healthcare unless, on another level, we know we have something within us that is pure and trustworthy, that wants to give and receive love.  We know at our core that we are all part of something larger than ourselves.  And, when we remind ourselves that there is something good and worthy at our core, it really helps us find the inner peace that is often elusive. It replaces our illusion of aloneness and lack of hope with a restored faith and experience of living community.

I am reminded of the poem by Palestinian-American poet, Naomi Shihab Nye.

TWO COUNTRIES

Skin remembers how long the years grow

when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel

of singleness, feather lost from the tail

of a bird, swirling onto a step, swept away by someone who never saw

it was a feather.  Skin ate, walked

slept by itself, knew how to raise a

See-you-later hand.  But skin felt

it was never seen, never known as

a land on the map, nose like a city,

hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque

and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.

Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.

Love means you breathe in two countries

And skin remembers - silk, spiny grass

deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.

Even now, when skin is not alone,

it remembers being alone and thanks something larger

that there are travelers, that people go places

larger than themselves.

                                  —  Naomi Shihab Nye

May we all open up to the vast resources within and around us in the larger world.  Health in your body, peace in your spirit and love in your heart.